CRAVE Restaurant

This midwest chain recently opened in the new Downtown Summerlin complex. It claims to be chef driven — and maybe it is — but the quality and execution is on par with similar chain restaurants. The duck confit flatbread ($15.95) was one of the more interesting sounding dishes, but there wasn’t enough duck to balance out the sweetness of all the fig marmalade. The lemon garlic wings ($13.95) were huge, but the heavy lemon flavor made them unappealing. The Crave burger ($13.95) wasn’t bad. It’s a simple burger made up of an angus patty, smoked cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion and their signature burger sauce. The undercooked and under seasoned patty were the only thing holding it back from being a decent burger. Desserts fared much better. Although for someone with a sweet tooth like mine it’s tough to screw up chocolate cake ($7.95) — five layers of dense, moist, sweet chocolate cake. It was, however, lacking a sufficient amount of the orange creme anglaise mentioned on the menu. The S’mores brownie ($7.95) had some enticing elements like the chewy brownie and the marshmallow ice cream, but the amount of torched marshmallow topping the brownie was overload.

With so many other places in town to try, I’m not sure I’ll return. Sure, they have a large menu, which also includes sushi but the combination of that and American food in the same restaurant is an even bigger deterrent to my return.